Sam, a cross between a smurf and the comic strip character, Pogo, is a young child who likes to dress up in his pajamas with a cape and a mask and pretend to be his hero - Pajama Man. Most of the games each have An Aesop.

The series also spawned multiple children's books (not all of which may have been published), including Pajama Sam: Amazing TV Adventure!, Pajama Sam: Color and Activity Book, Pajama Sam: Food Fight!, Pajama Sam: Mission to the Moon, Pajama Sam: Out To Lunch!, Pajama Sam: The Magic Hat Tree, and Pajama Sam: What's Different?, as well as a Pajama ManComic Book Adaptation, including Don't Rain On My Parade (issue #223), and The Milkman Always Burps Twice! (issue #619).

The premises, by installment

In Pajama Sam in No Need To Hide When It's Dark Outside, the first half of Pajama Sam: Color and Activity Book, and the first third of Pajama Sam: What's Different?, Sam is scared of the dark, and wants to defeat Darkness, who lives in his closet. After entering his closet, Sam falls into the Land of Darkness, an almost Nightmare Fuel-ish forest. He loses his stuff (his mask, his flashlight and his lunchbox) and he has to find them before he can confront Darkness. At the end of the game Sam realizes that Darkness isn't evil and he shouldn't be scared of him.

In Pajama Sam's SockWorks, Sam is tasked with sorting the socks he picked up in his previous adventure. He decides to rest his eyes for a minute, but soon falls asleep, and dreams of the Sock-o-Matic Mark III, a machine to sort his socks for him.

In Pajama Sam 2: Thunder And Lightning Aren't So Frightening, the second half of Pajama Sam: Color and Activity Book, and the second third of Pajama Sam: What's Different?, Sam is watching TV during a storm and is scared by thunder and lightning. He goes up into the clouds and finds World Wide Weather, the people who control the weather, and accidentally presses the Big Red Button that screws everything up. Sam then has to go and find four talking machine components to fix it.

In Pajama Sam's Lost & Found, Sam is tasked with cleaning his messy room, and soon discovers that many of his things have fallen through the space under his bed and into other places. He dives in to find his missing stuff and ends up traveling through the Land of Darkness's river and mines, the North Pole, World Wide Weather's factory, and his own neighborhood.

In Pajama Sam 3: You Are What You Eat From Your Head To Your Feet and the third third of Pajama Sam: What's Different?, Sam becomes ill after eating too many cookies, only for the remainder to somehow come alive and take him to MopTop Island, an island resembling his own body. While there, he learns that there is a lot of conflict between the six factions of food groups. A delegate from each group has been chosen to attend a conference for peace talks, however most have gone missing. Sam must go and find the missing delegates and make it home in time for dinner.

In Pajama Sam's One-Stop Fun Shop, Sam has finished his chores quickly and has lots of time to play with his One-Stop Fun Shop, which includes projects such as toys, cards, and decorations for his room, as well as activities.

In Pajama Sam: Mission to the Moon, Sam and Carrot are having lunch at Pierre's Pickle Palace in the Land of Darkness, but the moonlight is too dim for anybody to read the restaurant's menus. Sam volunteers to be slingshotted to the moon, and must turn the moonlight up then find a way back to Earth.

In Pajama Sam: The Magic Hat Tree, Sam and Carrot discover the Magic Hat Tree in the Land of Darkness and try on the tree's hats, which magically place the two of them in various situations.

In Pajama Sam: Amazing TV Adventure!, Sam is watching TV, but the picture suddenly goes black. In desperation, Sam punches all the buttons on the remote control at the same time, zapping him and the remote into the TV Zone. In each TV program, Sam must find the remote in order to zap into a different TV program.

In Pajama Sam: Out To Lunch!, Sam wakes up trapped in his lunch box, and soon finds himself being stalked by a creepy celery stalk. Sam tries to get out fast in order to avoid being late for school.

In Pajama Sam: Games To Play On Any Day, Sam is stuck indoors due to rain and decides to play some board games. He climbs the shelves of the board games closet in search of his favorite game, but loses his footing and falls down through a pile of board games that had tumbled out of the closet, landing in an area filled with board games to play.

In Pajama Sam: Life Is Rough When You Lose Your Stuff!, Sam is watching TV and sees an announcement that "Pajama Man" is signing autographs at the mall. Sam plans to get his copy of Pajama Man issue #1 signed, but it gets pulled down into a pile of clutter. He dives in after it and falls into a land resembling his messy room. He finds out that his comic book has been taken to Grubby Corners Mall for Dr. Grime to sign. Sam must find a shirt, shoes and socks in order to gain entry to Grubby Corners and reclaim his comic book. This game was made after Humongous was bought out by Atari, and was infamous for many big problems. It was plagued with bad voice acting, poor writing, Loads and Loads of Loading, and many others. No more games have been seen since.

A demo version of No Need To Hide When It's Dark Outside can be downloaded from Infogrames.

Aesop Amnesia: At the end of Lost & Found Sam learns to keep his room clean, but it's messier than ever in Life Is Rough When You Lose Your Stuff!, which ends with Sam learning a very similar lesson in cleanliness.

A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Sam is tasked with finding the Automated Snowflake Inspector to repair the snow machine. On his way he meets the Snowflake Inspector Detector, or SID, who claims that finding the Inspector is his whole job because the Inspector runs away a lot. Once Sam and SID find the Inspector, he adamantly refuses to return to work because no one appreciates what he does.

Air-Vent Passageway: Sam uses one to reach a room's ceiling near the end of Life Is Rough When You Lose Your Stuff!

The Tie-In NovelPajama Sam: Color and Activity Book, a Compressed Adaptation of the games No Need To Hide When It's Dark Outside and Thunder And Lightning Aren't So Frightening.

The Tie-In NovelPajama Sam: What's Different?, a Compressed Adaptation of the games No Need To Hide When It's Dark Outside, Thunder And Lightning Aren't So Frightening, and You Are What You Eat From Your Head To Your Feet.

Always Night: The first and fourth games certain parts of Lost & Found explicitly takes place at night (after all, there's no need to hide when it's dark outside, but Thunder and Lightning takes place during the day. The third game appears to take place during twilight hour, given it happens just before dinner.

Amazing Technicolor Population: Granted, we only see Sam, but his skin is light blue. Most of the Pajama Man characters have blue skin as well as Sam's rarely seen mom.

Selma Celery: Silverware should be placed as follows: forks on the left. Salad fork, seafood fork, and steak fork. To the right we have the steak knife, seafood knife, soup spoon. Cocktail weenie poker, swizzle stick, (laying a golf club down on the table) and mashie niblick.

Blessed Are the Cheesemakers: Apart from the many, MANY, appareances of cheese in the clickable background events, Sam's favorite snack "Cheese Giblets" is used to solve a puzzle. And in the Land of Darkness they play a game called "Cheese and Crackers" which is basically tic-tac-toe with the titular food as tokens.

A gag credit at the end of the first game said "No cheese was eaten in the production of this game", followed by "Mmmm... cheese".

I float and I think And I think and I think About walking or driving a car Or riding a bike And I think and I float Because I'm just a Brain in a Jar

Brick Joke: Throughout the beginning of the third game, Sam is trying to get ready for dinner but it has been spoiled by all the cookies he ate. This is almost completely disregarded once he makes he out of jail, up until the very end, when Florette reminds him.

Button Mashing: In the first game, this is the easiest way to swing over to the oars on the wall.

Canon Discontinuity: Sam creates the stories in One-Stop Fun Shop's storytime coloring book, so the five stories are most likely not canon.

Clementine the Cow from Don't Rain On My Parade (issue #223) and The Milkman Always Burps Twice! (issue #619) is featured in the One-Stop Fun Shop and has her own Pajama Mantrading card in Life Is Rough When You Lose Your Stuff!

Thunder & Lightning, both from Don't Rain On My Parade (issue #223), and Dr. Scott Bruvvers of the S.H.M.O. (Superhero Health Maintenance Organization) and the Malevolent Milk Molecules, both from The Milkman Always Burps Twice! (issue #619), all have their own Pajama Mantrading cards in Life Is Rough When You Lose Your Stuff!

The Alternate ContinuityTie-In NovelPajama Sam: Color and Activity Book, based on the games No Need To Hide When It's Dark Outside and Thunder And Lightning Aren't So Frightening.

The Alternate ContinuityTie-In NovelPajama Sam: What's Different?, based on the games No Need To Hide When It's Dark Outside, Thunder And Lightning Aren't So Frightening, and You Are What You Eat From Your Head To Your Feet.

Some games' HE4 files, as well as Life is Rough When You Lose Your Stuff!'s music.he file, contain Dummied Out music.

Life Is Rough When You Lose Your Stuff! was apparently going to have a Sock Musical reprise featuring both socks.

Damn You, Muscle Memory: The fourth game changed the "skip cutscenes" key from Escape to Enter (with Escape now functioning as an additional way to access the Main Menu), leaving many unaware it was possible to skip cut scenes.

Dark Is Evil: Darkness (the Pajama Man villain, not the character Sam meets).

Dark Is Not Evil: Darkness (the character Sam meets, not the Pajama Man villain).

Demoted to Extra: Carrot was a recurring character until the fourth game, where he only made cameos (on a poster in Sam's room and on a stone carving during a clickpoint in the Land of Broken Toys). He may have just started Commuting on a Bus, but the lack of any further installments makes it this trope.

The Dev Team Thinks of Everything: If SockWorks fails to load a level, it instead loads " Bad Level"note the space at the beginning is part of the title (which can also be accessed by using ScummVM's debugger and typing "room 7" without signing in). The level has no socks, only containing four blue conveyor belts, a red laundry basket, and the message "This Level cannot be read from the CD. Please clean the CD and check for scratches." As soon as the level is loaded, a crash is heard, and Sam says "Uh oh... Something's wrong! The Sock-O-Matic only sets itself up like this when it can't read its instructions from the CD. The CD might be dirty, or even scratched! I think you'd better quit the game and try cleaning the CD."

Door to Before: In Life Is Rough When You Lose Your Stuff!, the Dresser Scaling mini-game can serve as this, due to a Good Bad Bug.

Double Take: Lightning pulls a textbook one of these when Sam first enters the Master Control Room in the second game.

Pajama Sam and Bill Gate have two unused exchanges (with unfinished animation) that can be triggered by using Foster Boondoggle's employee ID card on Bill Gate (which can only be done by using the game's debug mode or ScummVM's debugger).

Lost & Found:

Two unused and blank instructions screens exist, and both can be accessed using ScummVM's debugger. The first one (accessed by typing "room 7") has the level menu's blue background. The second one (accessed by typing "room 22") has the bonus menu's orange background and two additional elements: a red X crossing out the "INSTRUCTIONS" heading common to both instructions screens and an exhausted-looking computer monitor character who does not appear elsewhere.

You Are What You Eat From Your Head To Your Feet:

The Sweet Troops have unused riot gear that can be unlocked by adding "WTO=S" to the game's section in the INI file.

Easter Egg: Lost & Found has three secret passcodes: "BONUS" takes you to the bonus games menu, "CRAZY" acts as a Silliness Switch for the main game (even in the demo version), and "ENDIT" skips to the game's ending cutscene.

There is also a hidden animation in Thunder and Lightning Aren't so Frightening, which makes Pajama Sam takes a dump in the toilet.

Fun with Acronyms: From the third game, S.S.A.M. (Snacks and Sweets Aggressive Majority), which Sam initially mistakes for a misspelling of his name.

Furry Confusion: Somewhat. The party in the third game that Sam lands in has a candy cane dancing, but what is the jail cell made out of? Candy Canes!

Game-Breaking Bug: In SockWorks, passing a sock through a multi-color paint bucket changes the color of every sock in the level, not just the sock that passed through the bucket. This can make levels with multi-color buckets much harder or easier than intended.

Game Within a Game: The Remote Mining Terminal known as Nuggets in the first game, which is a clone of Snake. There's also the Sorry!-esque board game in the second game.

All of Sam's family (besides his mom, who's The Faceless), most notably his big brother Mark.

In Thunder And Lightning Aren't So Frightening, Foster Boondoggle is only seen in a photo.

In Life is Rough When You Lose Your Stuff!, Dr. Grime (presumably not the one from Pajama Man, as with Darkness in No Need To Hide When It's Dark Outside and Thunder & Lightning in Thunder And Lightning Aren't So Frightening) is only seen in a photo.

Guide Dang It: In You Are What You Eat From Your Head To Your Feet, who would have thought the solution to the beans on strike scenario would be to simply switch the signs around when the crowd isn't looking?

In the same game, knowing the Caramel Pit (where Granny Smyth is) even exists can be a pain, since the entrance is in the background of the constantly wavy background of the soda dance floor.

In "No Need To Hide When It's Dark Outside," one of the missions to get the flashlight, is incredibly complicated. First you need to get a pickaxe that you then use to pick up some gold. Then you use that gold to cross a bridge, where you pick up a sentient pencil. Then you have to find a hammer that you use to break through some boards. Then you use the pencil to break through a wall (It Makes Sense in Context). Then you race into another room that is pitch black. Then you flip a switch to turn the lights on. Then you go back into where the dark room was. There's a mechanism that is used to send you flying towards the flashlight, but you need a certain gear. So then you go back to Darkness' house to talk to a clock. He says he'll give you one of his gears if you correctly reset his time. So then you go to another room in Darkness' house to check one of the clocks for the correct time. Then you go back to the Grandfather clock and input the correct time. Then you collect the gear, head back into the mines, put the gear in place, and finally use the mechanism to send you flying straight to pick up the flashlight. Going through it the first time, especially for a young kid, would've been incredibly time consuming and confusing.

Hand Wave: In SockWorks, when making a level, if you face a pusher toward a chute and try to play the level, Sam will say, "If a sock came out of a chute while the pusher was moving, it could jam the machine and the whole Sock-o-Matic might blow up!" It actually just causes the sock to randomly teleport all over the place.

Idle Animation: Sam has one for every screen. Some of them are quite humorous, one of them being that if you wait long enough outside of World Wide Weather between the warehouse and the entrance with the hard hat on, Sam will do the YMCA.

Kick the Dog: The pairs of clean clothes in Life Is Rough When You Lose Your Stuff!'s Sock Musical sing the following to the lonely Soiled Sock:

We're all pairs, we're all pairs We'll always be together The world is fine, the world is fine The sun will shine forever in the sky You're all alone It's strange to see We guess you must deserve to be

The fourth game (perhaps due to the newly-introduced autosave feature). There is a five-second wait between every screen. Now, when you first hear that, it doesn't sound too bad, but to begin with, the previous three games took less than half a second to load, and even quicker if ran off the hard drive. The fourth game, on the other hand, takes much longer, even though all data is put on the hard drive. All of this time adds up for a heck of a long wait. It makes skipping movement phases almost pointless. Thankfully, Atari's later Putt-Putt: Pep's Birthday Surprise fixed this.

No OSHA Compliance: Despite being located up in the clouds, World Wide Weather (second game) has very few railings alongside its factory walkways. If Sam were to trip on his cape again out there like he does in an early cutscene...!

In the first game, have Sam show Carrot to the trees by the wishing well. During the exchange that follows, Sam's head is slightly Off Model when he's looking at Carrot.

In the first game, after Sam gets rid of the rust holding King in place, King will occasionally zoom by on the mine tracks near the entrance to Darkness's house and the bottom of the waterfall. King doesn't stop in either place, but if you look closely (or pause the game at the right moment) you can see that his face is Off Model, especially when he's on the mine tracks near the bottom of the waterfall.

Photo Montage: The credits of No Need To Hide When It's Dark Outside (with comic book pages), You Are What You Eat From Your Head To Your Feet, and Life Is Rough When You Lose Your Stuff! (with the pictures from the Pajama Mantrading cards).

President Mole: In one of the story paths in the second game results in the carrot from the first game infiltrating the company, becoming a member of the board, and eventually completely dissolving it to run it himself.

Rapid Hair Growth:One of the hilarious potion recipes in No Need to Hide When It's Dark Outside promised that it would grow out hair. When Same tries it, he first grows out locks that reach the floor, quickly grow longer than he is, and then escalates until he is completely wrapped in hair, gets angry and chases the resultant giant hairball away.

Recycled Soundtrack: SockWorks, Lost & Found, One-Stop Fun Shop, and Games To Play On Any Day each reuse music from previous games.

Save Game Limits: The other Junior Arcade games had a nice save system where you could save up to 75 names, and it would keep track of score. Lost & Found, however, decided to use Password Saves. While they were stored, scores weren't, and you couldn't have more than one game going on at once. Not to mention that if you want a good score, you have to play the game all the way through without shutting it off.

Sequel Hook: The end of SockWorks sets up the beginning of Thunder And Lightning Aren't So Frightening.

Scenery Porn: The tree house in "No Need to Hide When Its Dark Outside" is gorgeously done, as well as the paint area.

Shaggy Dog Story: The Tie-In NovelPajama Sam: Mission to the Moon. Pajama Sam manages to turn up the moonlight and get back to Earth, only to discover that the menus at Pierre's Pickle Palace are written in French.

Silliness Switch: In Lost & Found (even the demo version), entering the passcode "CRAZY" causes the levels' layers to move up and down—more than just a visual difference, since it even affects the layers that hold items and obstacles. Entering the passcode again returns the layers to normal.

If you watch his animations carefully, he stuffs everything he carries in the underside of his cape.

In Life Is Rough When You Lose Your Stuff!, he refers to it as his pocket.

In SockWorks he has a standard pocket that's only visible when he takes things out of it, but since it's part of a Dream Sequence it probably doesn't count.

Umpteenth Customer: Sam has to become the 30th customer at Leavins n' Squeezins in the fourth game to get a special pass.

Unwinnable by Design: Averted in Thunder and Lightning Aren't So Frightening. Two of the games' puzzles are dependent on Sam getting an item out of the cafeteria vending machine, but he can only earn gold coins once. The game has a feature that allows players to choose one of six predetermined puzzle scenarios where all four objects are placed at the same time, and none of the game's predetermined combinations allows the mutually-exclusive puzzles to be played together.

The pick-your-puzzle feature returns in You Are What You Eat, but since there are no mutually-exclusive puzzles, each delegate's puzzle path can be chosen separately.

Visual Pun: Some of the click points in Life Is Rough When You Lose Your Stuff!

The Voice: Mr. Hereford from Thunder And Lightning Aren't So Frightening.

Warp Whistle: In Life Is Rough When You Lose Your Stuff!, the Dresser Scaling mini-game can serve as this, due to a Good Bad Bug.

Who's on First?: Sam invokes this by accident at one point in the second game. Though to his credit, when he called to "make an appointment to see someone" he didn't have any way of knowing that the personnel manager's name actually was George Someone.

Womb Level: MopTop Island, the world of You Are What You Eat From Your Head To Your Feet, is sort of this, since it's based on Sam's body.

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